The Psyche and Enlightenment

Carl Jung indentified 3 pairs of dualities that make up the ego. Katharine Briggs and Isabel Myers later used Jung's work for tests to assess personalities. There much background to this that can easily be researched on the net.

These dualities combine to give 8 functions that are used by all pysches. Not all the functions are equally conscious and the dualities exist by functions being unconscious. The relative degree of consciousness is determined by an individuals preference for a function. Which functions an individual prefers determines their broad personality base. With the 8 functions there are 16 possibile personality types with 4 functions conscious and 4 unconscious.

Jung termed "individuation" as the process of development whereby the unconscious is made conscious. This infers the dualities are seen through. There are many similarities between the Jungian model of ego development and the Budhist ideas of self to no self or enlightenment. Here I want to touch on personality and enlightenment.

Jung's 3 pairs of dualities are
1 - external / internal. This is the mind objects subject/object duality that the pysche works with or creates.
2 - sensing / intuition. This is the mind objects perceptual duality the the pysche creates. Sensing is the information of the senses, intuition of the abstract.
3 - Thinking / Feeling. This is the mind objects judgement duality. Thinking jugdement is structured and Feeling judgement unstructured (left brain/ right brain stuff).

cont

These dualities are created by the psyche and appear "real" to the conscious ego to the extent of that which is hidden or unconscious. To see through the duality the unconscious must become conscious. So to become enlightened we ulimately have to push buttons in the unconscious. What can be extrapolated from Jung's work is that what works to push these buttons for one individual will not neccesarily work for another. In fact a practice that did wonders in one individual may just be working in the conscious of another and therefore of little value. Also practice needs to vary depending on the stage as there are two pairs of functions in the unconscious one pair more unconscious than the other, what worked for the first pair may not be optimal for the second pair. All "windows" or views of the unconscious (eg lucid dreams) are assisting with enlightenment.

It cannot be assumed that a practice that worked for you is optimal for another, individuals have different doorways to the unconscious to realise the illusion of the components we call the ego or self.

[edited for clarity]

Is there a question here?

"Is there a question here?"

Hi Constance,

No question.
I am saying certain practices are suited to different personalities. Also that it is possible to know those practices best suited for the different personalities to push the boundaries of the conscious. This is done by knowing the dualities in our psyche so we can do practice that targets the unconscious. The differing types of practice objects like Kasina, sensations, thought and the the methods Vispasana and Witness are biased to particular dualities of the psyche. The most effective practice is not neccesarily the the one that feels most comfortable because we want to move to the unconscious. If you know your personality type in terms of these dualities you can better choose an effective practice.

Most will be familar with how the mind sets up a subject/object duality, there are also dualities setup by what is percieved and the manner of judgement. Choiceless awareness pratice is aimed at reducing the perceiving and judgement dualities.
By way of an example of the way things operate my preferred functions are subjective stuctured judgement with objective abstract perception. This is the way I communicate and I can watch the subject/object process. The reality we have is arrived at by "choosing" what will be subject and object, what will be percieved and how it is judged.
The subject/object duality is oftened referred to as some extact internal representation of some "thing". This is not really the case, it is better represented as a process of perceiving reality and judging it and we do this differently depending on our preference for using the functions available in the psyche.

HI! This is very interesting. I wonder, have you worked out thecorrelations between types and practices? Although I am skeptical of typologies I find Jung's work very aplicable when not followed dogmatically. Meyers-Briggs typology is an interesting application. The main objection I have is that I seem to function differently in different contexts and I suspect that it's so for many others. In other words, the configurations of the functions in terms of which are conscious and which unconscious is different when I operate in different modes. Apparently I operate in an INFP mode when I take the meyers/briggs, ha ha~ But even so, such self understanding could be used to fine tune which practice modality to engage in any given moment if we got the correlations worked out! When combined with such a modal/fluidic approach to typology this could be very powerful. Or is the experiencing through different modalities a byproduct of the individuation process whereby we begin to function in ways not established by the baseline ego? Very cool--

Hi Jake,
Myers Briggs and Jung would not say we operate in "personality" modes. They would say you are always were and will be the one personality type. This is because the ego does not change those functions for which there is a preference or most familar with.

Assuming you are an INFP what does this mean with regards to what I am saying?
The functions in your psyche are in the following preference.
Conscious
Subjective unstructured judgement - Fi
Objective Intuition - Ne
Subjective sensing - Si
Objective structured judging - Te

Unconscious
Objective unstructured judgement - Fe
Subjective Intuition - Ni
Objective sensing - Se
Subjective structured judging - Ti

You can recognize the process of Fi / Ne. Ne is what you speak or wrote in the post above, this is an object to the ego. Consider how this was subjectively judged. Also consider the mode you operate under when stressed Si / Te. How you tell as it is in a very structured way drawing on your experience where the subject is your experience and the object your telling it the way it is. These modes of operation are clearly different, the reasons for the difference is that the ego has a process of dividing reality. From the ego's point of view these divisions or dualities cannot exist without the shadow or unconscious. So first observe the ego and the modes of operation. How none of these modes are real apart from the ego in process. The dualities subject / object, structured /unstructured judgement and sensing / intuition perception setup the ego to be in its "story" the unconcious is as close as these dualities are known. I think a variation in practice has a way of causing this knowing to naturally occur, but it helps to see the effects of practice in terms the way the ego operates and how it sets up it's reality.


more later ...

Hey Gary! Wow, interesting. Hmm... So the unconcious preferences are basically an inversion of subject and object? Am I reading that correctly? And would this constitute the shadow complex? Where would the Anima and other para-egoic complexes fit in? I recall Jung somewhere writing about individuation that it begins as the ego "descends" a step towards the unconscious functions, specifically the inferior function, and it "ascends" a step towards consciousness. Retrospectively I can see something like this in my life as a greater tolerance for being seen in my shadowy aspects and even consciously operating in them. Also, the different modes I am thinking of generally pertain to socializing and playing music. During the former I come off as intellectual and not very feeling expressive while during the latter I come off more charismatically and expressive. Also there's a very very different way of experiencing from within these modes. I basically free associate lyrics (and music) while I play and when it's ON they come out with whole songs (with spontaneaus, clear structures) that say something meaningful to me; I call it dream singing. It's always felt like a shadow thing, by which term you'll see I don't imply anything negative. Over the course of my life each mode becomes more available in the other context, or each context manifests a mode comprised of elements of both. Earlier in my life there was a pretty stark division with some notable exceptions, like falling in love or greaving. Would you explain this in terms of my conscious functions only? I'm so interested because this is so clearly relevent to my practice. I think you're on to something here; this could be the basis for a form of counseling for practitioners.
--Jake

Hi Jake,
The application of counseling for practioners is beyond the scope of what I am saying here, although maybe someone with more experience could make conclusions. Also I think it is worthwhile keeping in mind practice is not content, but the watching of the process.

Having watched these dualities a bit it was natural to push the boundaries. The pushing of the boundaries is about "allowing" what you know must be missing or really trying to know what is not there. I think it is this that has caused lucid dreams, although it is hard to be certain. The process of allowing does feel a "edgey" but I have not felt out of control, so I think it is quite safe. I think it is a bit like the 3 characteristics in that you have to know them from experience for it to be worthwhile. The 3 characteristics is of reality, this is "3 characteristics" or illusions of ego.

Keep watching the 3 dualities ( as you appear to be doing above) and the combinations your ego manifests and consider the incompleteness of the manifestation. The hardest part is getting a handle on what the dualities are to be able to observe them. I think subject / object duality is the best one to get first because you can then watch what is in subject and what in in object, the two are never the same so there is a sense of how contrived it all is.

Hey! --- "practice is not content, but watching the process"-- I think we'd all agree to that. I meant more along the lines of "counseling" as in advising a mode of practice and coaching that with an eye to the advisee's ego structure in recomending a practice mode. Generally we Americans seem to trend towards syncretism in general and as Buddhists we seem to do that too. Understanding the relationship between practice modality and ego structure in terms of choosing for the former that's best suited to leading the latter beyond its conscious comfort zone towards the seemingly "unknown" would be an interesting way of counteracting the bad side of syncretism-- "doing practices" that reinforce our ego structure in its sense of imutabilty.
On the other hand, although Jung's orientation seems to be deeply significant the details of his models of the psyche and especially his typology have always seemed very bound to his historical milieu to me and I wonder what a more developmental approach to Jung would look like. Erich von Neuman contributed an interesting piece with his notion of "mesoversion" (I think I'm remembering that correctly!). Basically it's an orientation that at first oscillates between intro- and extroversion in a developmental process; rather than being oriented in one direction of that dimension (i.e. towards the subjective filters or the phenomena thus filtered) it moves towards an unfolding or transcendence of that duality. This might parallel with the taking of what seemed to be subject as actually part of the phenomenal field in mindfulness practice. I.E., people who are genuinely attracted to realization and who actually accomplish it might start out with a different *type* of typology....